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It’s about Getting ATTENTION! By salonhowto.com – Call Us Now On 618 9443 9327

It’s about Getting ATTENTION! By salonhowto.com – Call Us Now On 618 9443 9327

I am often approached by business people for advice on their marketing strategies. I rarely accept these approaches, primarily because a) most people in business aren’t willing to take the action – or series of actions – I prescribe for them, and then wonder why they never get any better results than they’ve always got, and b) because they simply don’t understand the power of direct response marketing, and therefore don’t value it.

However, yesterday I broke my own rules after my 24-year-old son asked me to advise his boss, a businessman of about my own age who I quickly deduced was attempting to crack a very large, hard rock with a toothpick.

The man had imported an expensive range of air-quality measuring equipment from Germany, and wanted some of the country’s largest corporations – a national bank, and a petroleum company – to buy these gadgets in their thousands for their many branch offices and outlets, so that their employees could be safe in the knowledge they were breathing air uncontaminated by poisonous gases like carbon monoxide. And he was perplexed that his flimsy, one-page letter to some of these companies’ big wig executives had failed to elicit a single response.

He sat open-mouthed as I quickly and surgically took apart his ‘strategy’ piece by piece. Folks, get this if you get nothing else about marketing your salon or spa:

The best offer, the best service, the most carefully crafted message on the planet is worthless unless you GET ATTENTION!
I explained to this poor chap that his small, insignificant mouse was attempting to rape their 10,000 pound gorilla, and was it any wonder the gorilla didn’t notice? Here’s what I told him to do:

“Take one of your air measuring gadgets and get pictures of yourself testing the air in one of the bank’s branches.

“Get an empty laboratory jar, one with a sealed lid. On an ordinary envelope label, print

“DO NOT OPEN THIS JAR.It contains contaminated air your employees at the (Name) branch of your bank are breathing right now.”

“Write a carefully-crafted sales letter – or get somebody to write one for you – explaining the attached photo of you testing the air, the enclosed print-out from the air testing equipment, why the reader should pay attention – ‘the air your employees are breathing at this branch is contaminated by excess levels of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and a dozen other nasty gases – please see the enclosed scientific report…’ and offering a solution -‘call me if you want to know more’.

“Put the empty sealed jar, the letter, the photo and the scientific report in a big official-looking box, find out where the relavant decision-makers live, and send it to their home addresses, assuming you can find them. Why their home addresses? Because you avoid the gatekeepers, secretaries and minders.”

My son’s boss looked at me open-mouthed. He was clearly astounded at the audacity of this approach, but I told him that was just the beginning. Ten days later, he would need to send a follow-up piece, equally or even more bold. And a week or two after that, yet another, and maybe another, and another…perhaps forever, until and when he got a response.

And that to implement this strategy, he would need to spend some time, energy and money – making sure he had the names and addresses of his target market, getting his marketing message together, paying somebody to write it, getting all this stuff delivered etc etc. It might cost him a few thousand dollars, if he hired a competent copywriter/marketing strategist.

Remember, this guy was attempting to secure sales that would net him many hundreds of thousands of dollars.He pondered this for a minute or two. And with a shrug of his shoulders and his next sentence, condemned himself to failure.

“Mmmm… I don’t know that I want to spend that sort of money. And it does sound like a whole lot of…trouble.”

Everybody wants the big result. So few are prepared to take the action to get it. Even fewer are prepared to stick their neck out and GET ATTENTION. So the spoils go to the very few who are willing to be

VISIBLE

BOLD

THICK-SKINNED

The rest get the crumbs left over by the victors. And those crumbs can be thin pickings indeed.

Here endeth the lesson. Now, let’s get with some ways of making you MONEY!